Pole dancing for charity, and more

Sam Zermeno, 26, a pole dance teacher at Embody Fitness in Anaheim Hills, rehearses before an upcoming charity event. The all-day event on August 4th will raise money for victims of domestic violence. EUGENE GARCIA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Jackie Arriaga, 30, rehearses her silks technique at Embody Fitness in Anaheim Hills before an upcoming charity event. The all-day event on August 4th will raise money for victims of domestic violence. EUGENE GARCIA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Selena Hernandez, Jackie Arriaga and Allison Rohm, from left, demonstrate their pole dancing skills at Embody Fitness in Anaheim Hills before an upcoming charity event. The all-day event on August 4th will raise money for victims of domestic violence. EUGENE GARCIA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Allison Rohm, 24, rehearses her pole dancing skills at Embody Fitness in Anaheim Hills before an upcoming charity event. The all-day event on August 4th will raise money for victims of domestic violence. EUGENE GARCIA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Sam Zermeno, 26, a pole dance teacher at Embody Fitness in Anaheim Hills, rehearses before an upcoming charity event. The all-day event on August 4th will raise money for victims of domestic violence. EUGENE GARCIA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Joyce Castillo, 38, who is pregnant, demonstrates her pole dancing skills at Embody Fitness in Anaheim Hills before an upcoming charity event. The all-day event on August 4th will raise money for victims of domestic violence. EUGENE GARCIA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Sam Zermeno, 26, a pole dance teacher at Embody Fitness in Anaheim Hills, rehearses before an upcoming charity event. The all-day event on August 4th will raise money for victims of domestic violence. EUGENE GARCIA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

"One Day to Sexy"

What: A fitness event including pole dancing instruction, exhibitions and a fashion show to benefit for the Women's Transitional Living Center of Orange to help victims of domestic violence.

When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday (Aug. 4)

Where: Embody Pole Fitness, 148 South Fairmont Blvd.,

Anaheim Hills.

Admission: Free but registration is required. Call (714) 782-7860. Raffle tickets will be sold and donations taken for the WTLC.

Diana Boyle is used to telling people she started her own pole dancing studio because she wanted one closer to her home.

"But that's not true," she said, breaking eye contact for the first time in the conversation. The confident entrepreneur seemed shaken, her voice quavering.

Boyle started Embody Pole Fitness, a center where women learn and practice pole dancing, aerial silk acrobatics and burlesque dance, for a reason that has more to do with an all-day charity event that Boyle is throwing Sunday at her studio in Anaheim Hills studio. She's raising money for the Women's Transitional Living Center, which helps victims of domestic violence. That hits closer to home for Boyle than any gym.

Boyle herself survived an abusive marriage.

"The real reason I started Embody is because women need a place where they can heal, where they can grow, where they can be themselves and where they can find an emotional attachment to other women," Boyle said.

Only in the past year has Boyle, 44, been able to talk about being trapped in a home where she feared for her life and slept in a locked car out in the driveway just to stay out of reach.

INFATUATION

Diana Boyle was 19, a student at Long Beach state, and pregnant. She also was certain that the father of her child could do no wrong.

"My mother tried to warn me," she remembers.

Mothers have a sense, coming from experience, and daughters have a tendency not to listen. Diana didn't, and married the guy who seemed like a regular Joe. That was even his name: Joe.

Within a year it had turned ugly.

Diana wasn't much of a cook at 20, but she took special pride one night in making beef Stroganoff for dinner. But Joe was late for dinner, and Diana called her mother, asking the best way to keep the food warm.

Those were the days when microwaves cost money and apartments didn't come with them. Diana's mother told her to sprinkle some water on the food and stick the dish back in the oven, where steam would warm it through. Diana had not popped it in the oven for long when Joe walked in and wanted his dinner.

"This is cold," he said.

He took the plate and threw it past her, smashing against the wall. Then he stormed out of the house.

Diana did something that to this day embarrasses her. She cleaned it up.

"Now, that plate would still be on the wall," she says. "And I would have packed my bags that night and left."

Instead, she stayed. She figured it would get better. She was wrong.

STRENGTH

Today, Diana Boyle sees women who don't feel comfortable putting on a pair of tight shorts. But they wear them at her studio, spinning around poles or dangling from silks tied to the ceiling, like circus acrobats.

In the studio's lobby, Boyle sells shoes with six-inch stiletto heels. At Embody, these are workout shoes.

"A lot of women are very closed in and inhibited and it's hard for them to put on a pair of booty shorts," Boyle said. "But it's here, the light is low, we're all women, we're all in the same boat. We say, 'Hey, it's OK to move that way to be confident and strong.' This is a place women can come and not be afraid."

It may seem ironic that an exercise that most associate with strippers has the ability to make women feel stronger. But that's exactly the reason they do it. They've turned objectification into power.

"It has nothing to do with men," Boyle says. "Zero."

Joyce Castillo, 38, doesn't hesitate to try on some form-fitting clothes and test her strength on a pole. But she's had to cut back and take more breaks in her routines lately. She's four months pregnant.

"You can just strip away all your inhibitions," Castillo said. "I just feel a lot freer when I come here."

Just try to hold yourself at arm's length, perpendicular to a vertical pole, or hanging from without the use of your arms, using only your leg muscles. These are like demonstrations of strength and power men use in gymnastics.

"You have to bit fit like an athlete to do this," said Jackie Arriaga, 30. "But we also see women of all different levels of fitness. It's about not being afraid to try."

They also talk about emotional strength.

Boyle occasionally will be talking to one of her clients and see the kind of fear she recognizes: a look that says she's afraid to go back home.

BULLIED

Diana's husband could yell for hours.

"You keep thinking it will stop, but four hours later, he's still yelling," she said. "You tell people that and they can't comprehend. Four hours. It's all about not letting you get sleep. It's like torture."

When it got too much, Diana slept in the backseat of her Mustang, with the doors locked. It was quiet.

Diana remembered her husband liked to throw a shoulder into her, slamming her into the wall. Or, as he yelled, he would block her from walking past him, pinning her against a wall.

"He was always so proud of saying he never hit me," Diana remembered. "He didn't have to. There are other ways to hurt people and try to control them."

It was enough to get Joe arrested. He would spend a year in jail.

Diana got away when her mother, Danielle Roberts, finally took her daughter out of the house. It had lasted seven years.

A divorce didn't stop the threats, however.

"I started to run early in the morning," she said. "One day, I was putting on my shoes on one morning, and I saw his car drive by. He called me and said, 'I saw you this morning. You know, you shouldn't run alone that early. It would be so easy to kill you."

She logged 2,400 calls from her ex-husband in one month.

Another day, she came home from a weekend of hiking Mount Langley and her house smelled like a barbecue. She found her bedroom with charred walls and her clothes in a smoldering pile in the middle of the floor. Fortunately, the fire never spread to the rest of the house.

Her husband called.

"Did you ever think I'd do anything like that?" she heard him say.

Diana got a judge in Riverside to grant a restraining order.

RECOVERY

The first step toward recovery came from within.

"I needed to find a counselor and find out who is Diana?" she said. "Then I had to focus on my kid, who had also been through this."

But recovery also involved physical strength. She was a runner and a hiker, but she'd heard pole dancing was an interesting form of strength training.

"I not only did not know how to express myself through movement, I was afraid," she said.

"I was afraid of looking silly. I was afraid of looking awkward."

She kept at it. Her confidence grew. She grew.

"It's made me a different person... It's made me more empathetic to other women.

She understands how women can become insecure, and how getting strong can change that.

That's why she started Embody.

Boyle, as trim and muscular as the 30 somethings who come to her studio, said getting stronger gave her the confidence to start her own business. She's also able to face the fear that once paralyzed her. Boyle is offering free classes to the clients of the Women's Transitional Center.

"I now understand I can do anything. If I work hard enough and practice long enough, I can do it," Boyle said. "And that's because of pole, 100 percent."

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